The Religious Roots of the First Amendment

Dissenting Protestants and the Separation of Church and State

Nicholas P. Miller

Shows how the separation of church and state was a fundamentally religious idea, originated, promoted and established by Biblically-conservative Christians based on primarily Biblical and religious ideas.

Also suggests that John Locke and other thinkers and ideas often associated with Enlightenment thought were actually influenced by and in some cases the product of Protestant religious thought.

The Religious Roots of the First Amendment

Dissenting Protestants and the Separation of Church and State

Nicholas P. Miller

Description

Traditional understandings of the genesis of the separation of church and state rest on assumptions about 'Enlightenment' and the republican ethos of citizenship. Nicholas Miller does not seek to dislodge that interpretation but to augment and enrich it by recovering its cultural and discursive religious contexts - specifically the discourse of Protestant dissent. He argues that commitments by certain dissenting Protestants to the right of private judgment in matters of Biblical interpretation, an outgrowth of the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, helped promote religious disestablishment in the early modern West. This movement climaxed in the disestablishment of religion in the early American colonies and nation. Miller identifies a continuous strand of this religious thought from the Protestant Reformation, across Europe, through the English Reformation, Civil War, and Restoration, into the American colonies. He examines seven key thinkers who played a major role in the development of this religious trajectory as it came to fruition in American political and legal history: William Penn, John Locke, Elisha Williams, Isaac Backus, William Livingston, John Witherspoon, and James Madison. Miller shows that the separation of church and state can be read, most persuasively, as the triumph of a particular strand of Protestant nonconformity - that which stretched back to the Puritan separatist and the Restoration sects, rather than to those, like Presbyterians, who sought to replace the 'wrong' church establishment with their own, 'right' one. The Religious Roots of the First Amendment contributes powerfully to the current trend among some historians to rescue the eighteenth-century clergymen and religious controversialists from the enormous condescension of posterity.

The Religious Roots of the First Amendment

Dissenting Protestants and the Separation of Church and State

Nicholas P. Miller

Table of Contents

Foreword Acknowledgments Prologue Introduction: Religion and American Disestablishment Chapter One: The Monk and the Bard: Luther's Protest to Milton's Protestant Vision Chapter Two: The Philosopher and the Enthusiast: John Locke and William Penn Bring Dissenting Protestantism to America Chapter Three: The Puritan Lawyer and the Baptist Preacher: Elisha Williams, Isaac Backus, and the Rise of Dissent in America Chapter Four: Revolutionary and Governor: William Livington and the Anglican Control of King's College Chapter Five: The Political Theologian and the Theological Politician: John Witherspoon and James Madison Make a National Principle Epilogue: Back to the Future: Three Competing Views of Church and State Appendix: A Discussion of Recent Works on the Rise of Religious Freedom and Disestablishment in the West Notes Bibliography Index

The Religious Roots of the First Amendment

Dissenting Protestants and the Separation of Church and State

Nicholas P. Miller

Author Information

Nicholas P. Miller, Director of the Andrews University International Religious Liberty Institute and Associate Professor of Church History, Andrews University Seminary

Nicholas P. Miller is Associate Professor of Church History at Andrews University Seventh-Day Adventist Theological Seminary

The Religious Roots of the First Amendment

Dissenting Protestants and the Separation of Church and State

Nicholas P. Miller

Reviews and Awards

"Millers tracing of the intellectual threads, strings, and ropes of Protestant dissenting thought demonstrates an impressive familiarity with history and theology, and his book is a valuable historic and intellectual review of the influence of the right of privatejudgment on separation of church and state through the eighteenth century. Issues with the epilogue should not hide the value of this contribution." - John Ragosta, Hamilton College, The American Historical Review